Music News

109 Last week Jammie Thomas, the first of 20,000 people the RIAA accused of infringement to go to trial, lost her battle with the record labels. A jury in Duluth, MN found Thomas liable for infringing copyright on 24 major-label recordings and awarded the record industry $220,000 in damages. Most of the other people sued settled out of court, but as her attorney Brian Toder explains to Jim and Greg, Thomas insisted that she did not download copyrighted songs to make them available for sharing in a folder on the KaZaApeer-to-peernetwork. Eric Bangeman, the managing editor of the website Ars Technica, also speaks to Jim and Greg about this issue, and he notes that this was a key point in the trial. The judge in the trial instructed the jury that the prosecution didn‘t have to prove that any music was actually shared, just that Thomas made the files available for sharing. Toder and his legal team are gearing up for an appeal, and Thomas has proclaimed herself a permanent thorn in the side of the record industry, but until actual laws are changed to reflect the digital age, it’s doubtful any thorns will be able to penetrate the thick hide of the RIAA.